The actual fact is that YouTube has publicly committed itself to doing exactly that (building levers to raise and lower the profile of individual videos and cha

The actual fact is that YouTube has publicly committed itself to doing exactly that (building levers to raise and lower the profile of individual videos and channels), and continues to face media pressure to keep doing so as corporate policy: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-to-improve.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/01/continuing-our-work-t... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/youtube-conspiracy-theories_n_5d320f69e4b004b6adafbb99 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/youtube-conspiracy-theories_n... To me the problem isn't that flat earth videos exist on Youtube, but the implied "legitimacy" of the recommendations, along with the typically addictive UI elements like autoplay. Flat earth / Nibiru / etc insanity has always been on the internet, but when you saw it, you knew that you were in some obscure corner of the internet that was not normal. If anything, YouTube's insistence on mixing brand-safe, front-page recommendations along with content-adjacent recs lends credibility to the (many fewer now) "rabbit hole" recs. If you're on "Tony Blair is a reptile.mp4" and all you see are things like "Tony Blair is ACTUALLY a hologram.mp4" with 2k views, it's like "whoa, this is weird". But if you get 3 reptilian recs and 5 TED talk recs that have millions of views, maybe it seems more normal? I'm not sure.